If you have any interest in self-publishing, Raging Swan is having a 40% off sale. They produce a lot of reasonably priced and very neat town maps that have a nice hand drawn look (since I guess they are hand drawn). I picked up a couple this summer for a module I'm working on (almost done).

And again, for self-publishing, Purple Duck has 40% off their stock art (which is already really cheap at $3 each when not on sale) and so does Rogue Genius (even cheaper at $1.99 when not on sale, and only $1.11 now).

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

Prolific (and fairly high quality) OSR publisher Small Niche Games is having a sale on its print products over at RPGNow, $4.95 gets you the PDF and softcover of most of their adventures. Good for Thursday and Friday.

The Halls of Hollow Hill - This was apparently originally for a different game, but converted to Labyrinth Lord, 2nd to 4th level. 12 pages, $2.

The Lizardmen of Illzathatch - 3rd level adventure from Shane Ward/3 Toadstools. The PCs must investigate what happened to a party of dragon slayers. Now with pregenerated characters. 12 pages, Pay What You Want.

Trial of the Guild - Another Swords & Wizardry mini-adventure from Creation's Edge, this time for levels 7-9. For some reason, the PCs want to join an adventurer's guild...if they can past the entrance test. 13 pages, $1.50Whisper & Venom - This is a large adventure setting from Lesser Gnome. It's been available in print, this is the PDF. $12.95 and pretty big

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Kevin Crawford of Sine Nomine games has another Kickstarter, this time for Silent Legions, a Lovecraftian OSR game.

Silent Legions is a modern-day Lovecraftian
role-playing game, one built to support a sandbox style of gaming and
the creation of your own diabolical Mythos. While compatible with the Stars Without Number game system and many other classic old-school games, Silent Legions
is built to stand alone and provide you with everything you need to
develop a grim world of unspeakable occult secrets and mad, sorcerous
scheming.

Silent Legions is 160+ pages of
specially-designed material to help a game master create their own
cosmic evils and mysterious alien powers. Rather than simply recycle the
traditional Cthulhu Mythos baddies, Silent Legions gives
you the tools and techniques to make your own, the better to shock and
dismay your players with fresh horrors that haven't already been wrung
dry by familiarity. The creatures and cults the game helps you build are
also fully compatible with most classic OSR games, allowing you to
export them to other settings or mix and match with material you've
drawn in from your other games.

While a lot of new OSR modules are still coming out, most of them seem to be from newer people as older producers have run out of steam. So it's nice to see a new Advanced Adventures module get announced, both to see the line continue, and another 1e adventure (as most these days seem to be for S&W or LL).

Monday, November 17, 2014

The green dragon Illzathatch has been dispatched by local heroes “The Shields of Atreu”, thus ending his reign of terror across the countryside. Only one problem remains, the adventuring party left to raid the lair of the dragon, they have not been seen since.

Adventures

Lesserton & Mor - I don't know if this is a new product or just new to RPGNow, but at any rate, it's a large sandbox adventure settting from Faster Monkey Games (ook) describing a town and a large ruins complex. $16 and 116 pages

Majestic Wilderlands Print Bundle - This is print and PDF versions of Rob Conley's Majestic Wilderlands setting as well as the adventure, Scourge of the Demon Wolf. $19.99 for print copies, which is pretty impressive given PDFs often cost as much.

Rules

Yarr! Compete + Printed Book Bundle - Yarr! is apparently a pirate themed OSR game. This seems to be a bundle of a printed book of the rules and PDFs of several supplements. $9.75

Misc

Baby Bestiary Coloring Book Volume 1 - As this is statless, this is perhaps for any version of D&D, but basically it's a coloring book of D&D monsters. It's not meant for babies, it stars baby version of those monsters. 30 pages, $4.99 for PDF.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

While certainly not as good a deal as the humble bundle stuff, the Bundle of Holding has decent deals. Right now it's OSR themed: Labyrinth Lord (basic and advanced, the versions with art), Dyson's Delves, and People of the Pit (an adventure) for $7.95, and then for $18.95, you also get Scarlet Heroes (solo OSR gaming rules by Kevin Crawford), Death Frost Doom (meh, standard Screw You LoFP adventure), Lesserton and Mor (sandbox setting?), and a trilogy of adventures I've never heard of.

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Mischief, Inc. is looking for a few groups of playtesters for our upcoming adventure module 4A A Forgotten Evil. We are looking for groups willing to use Old School Rules, or a modern clone to test the adventure.

Player characters will be provided, as well as other playtest materials including journals designed to make feedback easier.

Non-disclosure
agreements are required for Game Masters and all players, and
participants will have their name listed in the Credits of the
adventure.

Monday, November 10, 2014

There was going to be an expanded version of this book (which details minor gods in an homage to a similar Judges Guild product, Lost Gods), but like a lot of ambitious projects, they just never happen.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

The Tomb of Rakoss the Undying is the premiere product from Mischief Inc (they've since followed it up The Inheritance), a short dungeon (well, tomb) adventure meant for old school D&D and its modern clones (aka OSR). It was free, then became a pay what you want product. I don't generally review free or PWYW products, since you can just download them yourself and see. That is, unless I happen to run them, which I did just recently.

Quite a lot of space (2 pages) is devoted to the background of the tomb and setting up the adventure. It basically boils down to "an evil warlord-wizard dude builds a tomb and this old guy hires you to explore it". While part of me appreciates the detail and effort they spent, in reality, people will probably be dropping it into their own gameworlds, so it's probably better to be vague and brief.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

This is a strange Kickstarter. Earlier this year there was a free OSR product called the Player's Primer of Ark from Ravenlore Press, which was a fairly long-ish introduction to an AD&D setting, The World of Ark (which sadly is not a spaceship).

About This Site

As a long time D&D fan who was lured back and then disappointed by the 5e announcement, I was thrilled to discover there was a whole bunch of people making products for old school versions of the game, either adventures and sourcebooks, or variations of the old rules.

But there was little in the way of news about new products, other than scattered comments on various message boards and sometimes not even that. So I thought I'd collect all the news I could find, as well as write the occasional review.

If you happen to have any news pertaining to OSR products, drop me a line at trancejeremy at yahoo.com